gmane.lisp.qi

Re: open source is not a business model

Konrad Hinsen — 2013-06-18T06:33:18

 > Regarding RMS, there are some fundamental philosophical ideas that he
 > has not grasped even after 30 years of public speaking.

I don't think he tries. RMS is the classical fundamentalist. He has
his set of dogmas to which he has adapted his own life and he dreams
of a world in which everyone thinks like he does. It's a retreat from
reality into an ideal world designed by himself, but which exists only
intellectually.

Konrad.

Re: open source is not a business model

Konrad Hinsen — 2013-06-18T06:18:34

 > When you give everything for free, and then ask someone for money, this is begging,
 > since the other person doesn't have to pay you anything, and it depends of their good
 > will.
 > You are not paid for your work, since you already gave that for free, and now hope or
 > beg that someone else give you something in return for nothing. That's pretty much the
 > definition of begging.

Let's put this back into the context of the original reference to
RMS. When he speaks about donations, it's not donations asked for by
individual programmers, but donations to the FSF, who uses the
accumulated donated funds to pay people to do work on free software.

Lots of organizations around the world work according to this model.
People give money to support an abstract cause, to an organization who
they trust to use it well. I don't call this begging. And RMS didn't
invent it, he was merely the first to apply it to software
development. Others have followed, e.g. the Apache foundation or the
Python software foundation

Re: open source is not a business model

Mark Tarver — 2013-06-17T11:51:45

The essay mentions Stallman.

Regarding RMS, there are some fundamental philosophical ideas that he
has not grasped even after 30 years of public speaking.

1. The foremost is that freedom is a vector concept - not a scalar
one.  Meaning that you cannot talk about freedom without talking about
the direction that freedom takes.  For instance your freedom to park
your car on my lawn and my freedom to cultivate the perfect lawn are
at loggerheads and frequently an increase in your freedom in one
direction is paid for at the expense of my freedom in another area.

When RMS contrasts 'free' and 'non-free' software he is missing out
the vector aspect of freedom.  He talks as if it was a scalar concept
like weight - 'this has more freedom than that'. GPL-licensed software
is actually very unfree in certain directions - notably the viral
aspect.  Shen-licensed code is actually friendlier for making money
because you can use it in an app without having to give your sources.
But there is the strong requirement on stan

Re: open source is not a business model

Mark Tarver — 2013-06-17T08:48:17

That message arrived just as I finished typing - but yes that captures
it well.

Mark

On Jun 17, 9:17 am, Marko Kocić <ma...-OJ4hiyDUgdhBDgjK7y7TUQ< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:

software errors on qilang

Mark Tarver — 2013-06-17T08:47:32

I'm experiencing software glitches on the group software; I've noticed
on the threads

Bad Request

Error 400

popping up.   A quick question - can everybody read Marko's
contribution on the previous post?

A second question - where does one go for Google support on malware or
malfunctions to Groups?

Mark

Re: open source is not a business model

Marko Kocić — 2013-06-17T08:17:36

When you give everything for free, and then ask someone for money, this is 
begging, since the other person doesn't have to pay you anything, and it 
depends of their good will.
You are not paid for your work, since you already gave that for free, and 
now hope or beg that someone else give you something in return for nothing. 
That's pretty much the definition of begging.

On Monday, June 17, 2013 9:03:21 AM UTC+2, Thomas Bartscher wrote:

Re: open source is not a business model

Mark Tarver — 2013-06-17T08:41:00

Yes, you are right.  Asking for donations should not be regarded a
begging if what you are offering is worthwhile - as Shen is.  In fact,
the development costs of Shen have been far less than most comparable
commercial or academic projects.




However imagine that at the end of every month, you had to go to your
boss and ask 'Please can you give me some money?' for the work you had
done that month.  And then he decides whether or not you get to eat.
 Now technically you might say that you are not begging because, hey,
you did the work.  But actually as a work arrangement it will feel to
you like you are a begger.  What I am saying is that this is not a
healthy working relation.  It is not a model which we can scale up
socially and recommend to ordinary programmers who are trying to feed
themselves or their families.




The other aspect of this is that keeping a project going through
donations is hard going.  Generally you find that about 2% of users
will contribute and 0.1% will contribute on a sc

Re: open source is not a business model

Thomas Bartscher — 2013-06-17T07:03:21

Huh, just read your essay and noticed this:
"Richard Stallman’s basis for an economically sustainable basis for FOSS is 
donations (i.e begging) and selling T-shirts"
Why is asking for donations begging? You do work and you get paid.

Am Montag, 10. Juni 2013 10:17:51 UTC+2 schrieb Mark Tarver:

Re: Custom klambda files

Mark Tarver — 2013-06-16T12:39:11

I want to add something parenthetically about the Shen sources and how
they are distributed.

Shen is bound by a strict standard of functionality embodied in a
license which says effectively that 'this has to work'.  We've got 126
tests in the test suite to back it up and Greg has devised more.  The
Shen sources freely available on shenlanguage.org are the best
physical instantiation of this standard to date and they are
constantly revised to eliminate bugs and improve the spec.  This
summer an improved TBoS comes out with 490 pages of text describing
exactly what Shen should do.

The situation with these sources is rather like the standard kilo kept
at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris (http://
www.bipm.org/en/scientific/mass/prototype.html).  Other kilo weights
are derived from the standard which is the canonical arbiter of
weight.  If we had a situation where say, there were 20-30 standard
kilos then any conflict would be scientifically and economically
disastrous.  Just as

Re: Custom klambda files

Mark Tarver — 2013-06-16T10:30:41

You are allowed to add facilities to Shen which are not part of the
language standard as long as the spec is not not broken.  If you are
writing code changes to Shen or KL source this would be derivative and
bound by the Shen license.  If you are writing something on top of
Shen e.g. a concurrency package then this is your work and the spec
and license are your choice.

Generally you would place this in a separate file because to place it
in a Shen system file would be to place it under the Shen license -
which would be meaningless if your work lay outside the standard.
Hence this sort of work is usefully part of a library.

What you are doing does not break the license as far as I can see; you
are simply adding a function with a new type.  This is done in
standard lib a lot.   Anybody can contribute to the library with the
only condition that some documentation is provided.

Regarding your addition, I'm sure that something like this is already
in the standard maths library.

Mark

On Jun 16, 10:23 am,

Re: Generating KL Files

Mark Tarver — 2013-06-16T10:19:49

'dump' was designed to help people run stand-alones but was dropped
mainly because it was not useful - since w.o. Shen system code a dump
file will not run. Also extracting all the supporting code is not
trivial and 'dump' did not do it. It is to be replaced by the Ring
which is more sophisticated, but you can easily write 'dump' for
yourself given the source file and ps.

Mark

On Jun 16, 10:33 am, Artella Coding <artella.cod...-gM/Ye1E23mwN+BqQ9rBEUg< at >public.gmane.org>
wrote:

Re: Generating KL Files

Artella Coding — 2013-06-16T09:33:58

Hi, has the "dump" function mentioned in 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/qilang/d0HtkbymiSM/u6mKPltH_8gJ been 
renamed? This function had the ability to convert a file containing shen 
code into klambda code, and this seems quite useful. Thanks.

Custom klambda files

Artella Coding — 2013-06-16T09:23:31

*Case under examination* : One adds the remainder function (%) to the 
compiler, and then adds an ADDITIONAL klambda file with "(declare % (cons 
number (cons --> (cons (cons number (cons --> (cons number ()))) ()))))" in 
order to ensure that the "%" operator still works when the typechecker is 
turned on. 

*Question* : Does this conform to the license? If not then how does one 
make this conform to the license?



*Key quotes from standard :* 

http://www.shenlanguage.org/Documentation/shendoc.htm

*Quote 1* : "However you are not free to modify Shen or produce a 
derivative versions of this work and distribute it unless what you produce 
conforms to the language standard."

*Quote 2* : "There may be packages which offer a richer range of types for 
numbers (fixnum and bignum etc.) with much greater scope for optimisation 
within the compiler and which are platform specific. However these will be 
plugins, not in the language standard or in the standard maths library."

*Quote 3* : "However anybody who im

Re: Shen 12 is up

Mark Thom — 2013-06-16T02:08:05

Wonderful, thank you.

On Monday, June 10, 2013 2:09:08 AM UTC-6, Mark Tarver wrote:

Re: Please

Mark Tarver — 2013-06-15T20:46:50

As I've said I have not banned newbie and my response is simply
reactive to his request.   I've written to him and suggested that he
take a week out on this and then I will rescind his request which I
regard as punishing.  If he still wants to withdraw membership then he
can do so himself. I'm sure that he recognises that this group is
supportive of his contribution and I'd like to thank those people who
have replied.

I don't want to keep this thread as a permanent marker because I think
we should not keep this alive.  I personally, (and I'm sure everybody
else) has had moments when they say or do things which reflect their
minds at a low point, but mostly no record exists of these moments.
Let it be so here.

Mark

On 14 June, 09:13, Mark Tarver <dr.mtar...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:

Re: Please

Jacob — 2013-06-14T17:37:42

Newbie, stop being so hard on yourself.  I think the only reason you were 
targeted earlier for posting too much is because you post like people do on 
facebook(basically they even tell you when they are going to use the 
bathroom).  If you can control yourself by not posting every single thought 
that crosses your mind(both complete and incomplete thoughts) then I am 
sure the understanding individuals here will not rage again.  The problem 
you tackled is more than I have done in Shen(read: nothing).  Maybe you 
could try out some of the Java ports; writing simple things in said ports 
to discover bugs in them. Doing so might possibly help to make the ports 
more sound.

On Thursday, June 13, 2013 10:58:14 PM UTC-4, newbie wrote:

Re: law on pictures

shaun gilchrist — 2013-06-14T15:31:43

If you can provide specific information I know a guy who is good at
hunting down answers about what is safely in the public domain or not.
But yeah, the answer is "it depends".

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 7:26 AM, Raoul Duke <raould-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:

Re: law on pictures

Raoul Duke — 2013-06-14T13:26:27

depends on the country/ies you are talking about publishing from? just
because somebody is long dead doesn't mean the copyright is now in the
public domain, cf. walt disney company (grrrrrrr).

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 4:40 AM, Mark Tarver <dr.mtarver-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:

Re: Please

Raoul Duke — 2013-06-14T13:28:26

er, if it is just because something was tried & failed, that's a lot
better than how i've mostly not tried :-) $0.02 'cause most people
literally cannot learn unless they try & fail and then try again.
edison was right, as cheesy as his quote is.

law on pictures

Mark Tarver — 2013-06-14T11:40:57

This is rather an off-topic post.  I'm publishing a book on Chinese
philosophy and wanted to use some old pictures.  The authors are long
dead but I wondered about copyright of the images involved.  Does the
copyright exist on the image?

Mark

Re: Recursively inline kl source

Martial B — 2013-06-14T10:12:51

Hi,

On Wednesday, 12 June 2013 23:33:23 UTC+2, jpd wrote:
 
I did a quick hack of your code to avoid this case (Note: I remove take and 
introduced zip; it's a personal choice, nothing better or worse):

(define zip
  X Y -> [] where (or (empty? X) (empty? Y))
  X Y -> (zip-help X Y []))

(define zip-help
  X Y Acc -> (reverse Acc) where (or (empty? X) (empty? Y))
  [X | Xs] [Y | Ys] Acc -> (zip-help Xs Ys [(< at >p X Y) | Acc]))

(define substitute
  Old New List -> (map (/. X (if (cons? X) (substitute Old New X) (if (= X 
Old) New X))) List))

(define substitute-with-zip
  [] List -> List
  [(< at >p O N) | Rest] List -> (substitute-with-zip Rest (substitute O N 
List)))

(define function?
  {A --> boolean}
  X -> (not (= (arity X) -1)))

(define user-function?
  F -> (and (function? F) (not (shen.sysfunc? F))))

(define kl-inline
  Kl NewParams -> (let A (reverse Kl)
       B (head (tail A))
       C (head A)
    (substitute-with-zip (zip B NewParams) C)))

(define walk-src
  Code Survey -> (let Chase (/. X (walk-